(HealthDay)—For individuals with asthma, increased fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure is associated with increased weekly rescue inhaler use, according to a study published online Nov. 26 in the Proceedings of the ...

Infant brain development is still poorly understood. Thus, research on the topic is vital as developing brains are sensitive to early environmental factors. Recognising this, the FinnBrain imaging study conducted in Turku ...

Researchers have unlocked details revealing how brains change in people with schizophrenia and evidence suggesting that in the early stages of the illness the brain may be compensating for damage caused.

The prevalence of allergic diseases has increased significantly over the last decades, creating substantial financial and societal burdens. Due to this, researchers are trying to discover new approaches to the prevention ...

MRI brain scans perform better than common clinical tests at predicting which people will go on to develop Alzheimer's disease, according to a study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society ...

Microscopic particles floating in the air we breathe come from sources such as fossil fuel combustion, fires, cigarettes and vehicles. Known as fine particulate matter, this form of air pollution increases the risk of cardiovascular ...

Researchers have developed a mouse model expressing the human tau protein and subjected it to repeated injury-producing impacts and rotational acceleration to be able to study the effects on social behavior, anxiety, spatial ...

Neurofilament light (NFL) is a support protein within large axons in the brain's white matter that supports nerve signal transmission. When axons are injured, increased NFL concentrations are found in the cerebrospinal fluid ...

Matter

Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume. However, different fields use the term in different and sometimes incompatible ways; there is no single agreed scientific meaning of the word "matter".

For much of the history of the natural sciences people have contemplated the exact nature of matter. The idea that matter was built of discrete building blocks, the so-called particulate theory of matter, was first put forward by the Greek philosophers Leucippus (~490 BC) and Democritus (~470–380 BC). Over time an increasingly fine structure for matter was discovered: objects are made from molecules, molecules consist of atoms, which in turn consist of interacting subatomic particles like protons and electrons.

Matter is commonly said to exist in four states (or phases): solid, liquid, gas and plasma. However, advances in experimental techniques have realized other phases, previously only theoretical constructs, such as Bose–Einstein condensates and fermionic condensates. A focus on an elementary-particle view of matter also leads to new phases of matter, such as the quark–gluon plasma.

In physics and chemistry, matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties, the so-called wave–particle duality.

In the realm of cosmology, extensions of the term matter are invoked to include dark matter and dark energy, concepts introduced to explain some odd phenomena of the observable universe, such as the galactic rotation curve. These exotic forms of "matter" do not refer to matter as "building blocks", but rather to currently poorly understood forms of mass and energy.